It’s hard to say if iOS devices will help fight crime in the land of the kiwi, but it’s worth a try.

Per Electronista, the New Zealand Police will be issuing 6,000 frontline officers with iPhones. Of those officers, a further 3,900 will also receive an iPad in an outsourcing deal with Vodafone worth US$159 million over ten years, including cellular charges. According to the NZ Police chief information officer Stephen Crombie, Apple’s iPhone and iPad lines were chosen following officer feedback after an 11-month trial.

“Based on frontline officer feedback from the trial (over 100 staff in four districts trialled smartphones, laptops and tablets over an 11-month period) the preferred devices are the iPhone as smartphone and iPad for the tablet,” Crombie told the National Business Review. “The approach used to develop the applications means Police can move to other devices with relative ease as technology changes,” he added.

The method, as detailed by YouTube user videosdebarraquito, involves making (and immediately canceling) an emergency call and holding down the power button twice. Tests confirmed that the hack worked on two UK iPhone 5s running iOS 6.1 and can be seen below:

Similar instances had occurred – and were patched – in iOS 4.1, and was fixed in iOS 4.2.

Apple has yet to reply to requests for comment regarding this situation.

Per MacRumors, just a day after Microsoft offered workarounds for an iOS 6.1 Exchange syncing bug and said that it was working with Apple on a solution, Apple has announced on its support page that it has identified the problem and is working on a fix:

“Apple has identified a fix and will make it available in an upcoming software update. In the meantime, you can avoid this bug by not responding to an exception to a recurring event on your iOS device. If you do experience the symptoms described above, disable then reenable the Exchange calendar on your iOS device using the steps below.
Apple details its own workaround until that update is available, advising users to go to ‘Mail, Contacts, Calendars’ under ‘Settings,’ selecting the Exchange account from the accounts list, turning the switch for ‘Calendars’ off, waiting 10 seconds and then turning it back on.”

The bug, which caused iOS 6.1 devices to continuously loop when syncing a recurring calendar meeting invitation to Microsoft Exchange, isn’t the first bug to stem from the two-week old iOS 6.1. iPhone 4S users were affected by a bug that hampered 3G performance, although that was fixed with Apple’s release of iOS 6.1.1 a couple days ago. There is no timeframe for when the fix for the Exchange bug will be released.

If you’ve seen this bug on your end, please let us know in the comments.